


Dreaming in Red

by karrenia_rune



Category: Memory Sorrow and Thorn - Tad Williams
Genre: Character Study, Gen, pre-book series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 23:32:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin, a character study of the legendary Hernystrri Prince Sinnach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreaming in Red

Disclaimer: the trilogy and the world in which the characters live are the original creations of Tad Williams and do not belong to me. This is in the era before events depicted in the book took place and  
features Prince Sinnach, the famous prince of the Hernystrri people.

"Dreaming in Red" by karrenia

 

His people live too closely entwined with the land to ignore the more subtle signs carried on the wind, the water, even on the leaves of the trees blowing in the wind.

In every season: From the first blush of spring when the buds are a merest glimmer in the eye, and into the heat of summer, the fall of leaves in the autumn and through the end of the year when snow blankets everything for as far as the eye can see; one can see the signs even they knew what to look for.

He has never been certain, even in his own mind, if this gift of seeing with the strong eye, what others might miss or even worse, take for granted comes from within, or from an ancestor of his line; still he knew it as a gift. The Peaceful Ones, as the Hernystrii have always referred to the near mythical race known as the Sithi are and perhaps always will be out there, for this was their land before the first men out the distant and now vanished West came and settled upon it.

Still, while the distant past and the recent past are important to remember, Prince Sinnach must now deal with the present and with much luck and planning, provide a future for his people. The signs of unrest, violence and war are blowing on the northern wind.

The thundering sound of Rhynn’s Cauldron, the great bronze drum that has hung from as long as anyone can remember near the entrance to the Taig, has been sounding, as it has always sounded when something threatened his people.

While he has never feared or shied away from a fight, or even all-out war, as horrible at is; he has come to know that one must always be prepared and determined to fight, even if the odds be such that it might very well mean the end of his line.

He shook his head and mentally attempted to shrug off such defeatist thoughts, thinking even as he does so, ‘He who has a why can endure anyhow.’

His fiery red hair which had earned him the nickname, the Red Fox, streamed out from behind his helmet as he pounded across the wide green meadows of his homeland.

As he covers the distance between the border river and his homeland, eating up the miles with every pace that his horse took, only pausing for the necessary resting, eating, and sleeping of both mount and man, does he realize that what he has learned today as momentous as is, will do no one any good if he kills himself and his horse through carelessness.

“An alliance, delicate as it might be, has come to pass between our two peoples. Such a thing has never happened in the all the lore that we know or have heard tell of in the oldest of tales.”

Close upon the heels of that particular thought comes another rather more sobering one: that in these troubled times with the King Fingil, who through terror, brutaltiy and ambition has more than earned the nickname, Bloody Fist in his march south from his northern holdings; it would take this to set aside centuries of isolation, superstition, and fear.

“Perhaps everyone was mad already, it has just taken these troubled times that we live in, to bring it out in them. Or maybe, Fingil and his Rimmesgarders, in their frost-crazed brains are the insane ones and must go out and deal with them.”

He sighs and slows the mad dash to a slower canter, and said aloud. “Then, so be it. If I have any power to make it so, the Peaceful Ones shall discover that the hearts, minds, and bodies of the Herynstrri run strong and true ! And they shall not find us wanting! I swear that this is so!”


End file.
